Måge

Steatite has special qualities. The stone is heavy and soft and has the ability to conserve heat. These qualities have been used in various ways, for shaping fishing weights, for weights for the loom, or “kljåsteinar”, for casting moulds, for cooking pots and paving slabs. Cooking pots made of steatite have been used in Norway from before the birth of Christ, but industry on a large scale did not come about until Viking times and the Middle Ages. The finely profiled building stone in medieval churches is steatite. But the use of steatite in cooking pots actually goes back 2,000 years. The pots were shaped with pick axe and chisel the pots were roughly shaped, to stand out as a plug out from the rock wall. Then the pot was cut loose, hollowed out and polished. The steatite pots had the great advantage that heating was even, the pots kept the heat and the porridge was not burned.